“The preface to the first edition of this book... shows that in 1958 the classification ideas in it were felt to controversial, needing to be championed. A few years before, the {{w|Classification Research Group}} had issued a memorandum proclaiming "the need for a faceted classification as the basis of all methods of information retrieval'. As part-author of this memorandum, I must now judge the claim to have been too bold, even brash.”